Tuesday, May 1, 2012

My Contribution to the Obama Campaign

Last night, I donated three dollars to the Barack
Obama campaign.I didn’t do it because I
believe in the transformative potential of a second term for the current president,
or because I expect good things to come of an emphasis on small-donor
contributions to political causes.I
didn’t even do it because I can afford it, because there’s some legitimate
doubt about that, even at the three dollar level.

In fact, my donation wasn’t in answer to my
conscience; it was in violation of it.And given what three dollars might otherwise have bought, it was an
irrational violation of my conscience.That is characteristic of playing the lottery.Yes, I donated three dollars to the Barack
Obama campaign last night because that was the minimum amount and the deadline
that allowed donors to be entered for a chance to win a trip to Los Angeles to have
dinner with Barack Obama and George Clooney.

I put off the donation all the way to the last
half-hour before the FEC fundraising deadline, because this involved a complex
economic and ethical calculation for me.It took until after 11:30 to hit that breaking point, but ultimately, I
decided that even in the faces of virtually infinitesimal chances and the
certainty of being left with a bad taste in my mouth, three dollars was
well-worth the long shot of being chosen to be able to have a conversation with
the president.(I wouldn’t really care
about meeting Clooney – I’d shake his hand and tell him I admire his body of
work, but I want to talk to policymakers.)

The economic calculation was significantly
influenced by what I know about the president.The current occupant of the highest office in the land has an admirable
sense of empathy, to the extent that he has been responsible for some instances
of helping private citizens to get jobs when they had spoken to him of their
difficulties.He has also been known to
occasionally write personal checks in response to letters detailing hardships
which the president felt he had no other way of addressing in the moment.

I wrote about those facts in the past, and though
they still impress me with regards to the kind of man that citizen Barack Obama
is, as I expressed then, I don’t like what it says about him as an occupant of
the presidential office.And to be
perfectly frank about my own motivations, I want to have dinner with President
Barack Obama so I can exploit the ear of the man and criticize the actions and
policies of the president.

Donating money to his campaign for the sake of a
shot at dinner in L.A. constituted an ethical compromise for me, because I
recognized that I was contributing to an unfortunate trend in American
politics.We complain a great deal about
the influence of big money in campaigns and policy making, the quid pro quo
involved.But as with everything else,
the broader tendencies, the impulses among the powerful, have their groundwork
in private, on-the-ground attitudes.

Regardless of whether it relies on three dollar
donations from across the country or one terrifyingly wealthy Super PAC, no
campaign and no political apparatus should be set up to encourage people to
contribute their resources to it in hopes that they will be delivered some
personal reward in return.And that’s
exactly what I’ve done.

I didn’t donate my three dollars to the Barack
Obama campaign because I believe that he represents my views and can be trusted
to carry out the policies that I think would be legitimately best for the
country as a whole; I did it in hopes of gaining access to the president so
that I could try to influence his policies.And more than that, I gave my money to the campaign in the interest of
trying to influence a private individual to help me personally.

I want to have dinner with the president so that I
can raise questions about his education policy, about the flawed common wisdom
that government cannot create jobs, and about the victim-blaming rhetoric that
dominates political explanations of joblessness, poverty, and loss.But I want to have dinner with a man with a
vast network of high-level connections so that I can impress upon him the
desperation of my need for a decent job, the reality of my qualifications and
talents, and the fact that nothing I do on my own can connect those thing to
actual employment.

I know that there have been a handful of other
people who have been in similar situations, found themselves in circumstances
that allowed them to bend the ear of the president, and acquired job leads by
virtue of his influence.I think it’s
wrong that anyone gets that chance, but the fact is that so long as someone
does, I hope it’s me.

For the time being, money in politics is a reality
that we have to work with.But the money
should follow the political causes, and the system that is accepted now by both
parties and at all levels encourages money to precede politics and to demand
that weakly malleable views on policy answer to purchased influence.I doubt, though, that my three dollars will
buy sufficient influence to demand that that system be questioned.

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About Me

I live my life in search of breaking points. It is only on the other side of them that I feel truly alive. It is only by breaking that I can build myself anew and develop as a person. I expect the same of society as a whole. Everything may come to a breaking point - a realization, a numerical, material, or emotional tipping point after which what has gone before can no longer be sustained. These are some of the breaking points I'm looking for.